Tuesday, November 15, 2016

Eating Crow on Thanksgiving

by Nick Paleologos

A
week ago tonight, when the reality of what was actually happening started to
sink in, I got a call from my daughter. She was crying. And I felt awful. She’s
one of three millennials in our family. I had been confidently predicting that
America would not let her down.

Boy
was I ever was wrong.

Back in August I imagined a future in which Donald
Trump, after losing this election, would take the worst of his backers and
skulk off to a fringe (but lucrative) corner of our country – leaving the rest
of his rational right-leaning supporters (including many members of my own
family) sitting around Thanksgiving tables all over America wondering what the
heck just happened.

Instead,
Donald Trump is now the 45th President of the United States and I’m
the one asking that question. Only twice in the last 125 years have the voters’
picked one candidate for president, and ended up with the other. In 2000, Al Gore
beat George W. Bush by a half million votes, and lost. This year, Hillary Clinton beat Donald
Trump by more than a million votes. She also lost. I’m not supposed to complain about
these outcomes because after all, rules are rules. If I still had a sense of
humor, I’d say the election was rigged - by Alexander Hamilton in 1789.

But
this isn’t about the Electoral College. It’s about my oldest daughter.

“President”
Trump is a very tough pill for her to swallow because his victory flies in the
face of everything we’ve ever taught her about decency, civility, empathy and
tolerance. Even worse, many people she loves – who themselves have sisters or
daughters – voted for a guy who bragged about grabbing women by their genitals
because “When you’re a star, you can
do anything.”

People
she admires – who pride themselves on their patriotism – voted for a guy who never served this country, who unapologetically
disrespected a Gold Star Family, and who publicly ridiculed a decorated Vietnam
War veteran and POW.

But
even with that, Trump barely bested Mitt Romney's vote total from four years ago. So how then to explain, without crushing my daughter’s
faith in democracy, that a guy who is a million votes less popular than Hillary Clinton, is now
President of the United States?

For
starters, we need to take a long hard look in the mirror. It certainly is true
that – as between Clinton and Trump this year – a clear majority supported
Hillary for president. But under our system, that (plus four bucks) will get
you a grande café mocha at Starbucks. Of all people, Hillary should have known
that.

So
how does she manage to lose (albeit barely) Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and maybe
Michigan? Let’s
start with Hillary’s first significant decision as the Democratic nominee: her
choice for Vice-President. Don’t get me wrong. I like Tim Kaine. But America’s middle
class is hurting. Big time. In eight short years, the federal budget surplus and
booming economy that Bill Clinton handed over to the GOP in 2000 (the year Bush
became president after the voters chose Gore) deteriorated into the worst
economic crisis since the Great Depression. That’s what deregulation, dumb
wars, and welfare-for-the-rich gave us.

Yet
even as Obama slowly and methodically dug us out from under the Republican rubble,
the crooks who caused it walked away with all the money. Millions of democratic
voters who lost their jobs, homes and pensions watched with increasing anger as tax dollars
meant to help them went instead to the very people who screwed them.

If
you’re the Democratic nominee who accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars in
speaking fees from this corrupt crowd, you damn well better pick a running mate
who can speak convincingly to the pain they caused.

Bernie
Sanders spoke to that pain. Elizabeth Warren spoke to that pain. But Hillary simply
lacked the boldness to pick either one of them. As a result, this election was
reduced to a choice between Trump’s sexism and Clinton’s emails. Is there any doubt
now that if Bernie were on the ticket, Hillary would have won the Electoral College
in addition to the popular vote? I don’t think so.

In
the end, her caution killed her.

Did
she trade on her celebrity to earn obscene speaking fees from institutions I
can’t stand? Yes. Did she make a bad (but not illegal) call using a private
email server? Yes and she owned up to, and apologized for it – many times. Has
anyone, anywhere – republican or democrat – found anything wrong about her
handling of Benghazi? Absolutely not.

At
the end of the day, she is a woman who - over the course of a distinguished
public career - has been accused of everything and convicted of nothing. On her
worst day, her public behavior has been infinitely more honorable than his.

So
this is what I told my daughter.

The
good news is that the American people did in fact chose the classier, more qualified candidate.
The bad news is that our system gave us the other guy.

Unfortunately,
Hillary spent her entire campaign relentlessly hammering home a single message:
Trump is a despicable human being. Congratulations. Mission accomplished. What
she failed to do was to give voice to the justifiable rage of middle class Democrats who
filled football stadiums for Bernie Sanders.

The
result? President Donald Trump.

Does
his election mean the end of the world as we know it? No.

Trump’s first act as President-Elect was to change Steve Bannon’s official
title from Racist Fearmonger to Senior White House Advisor. Not a great start.

On
the other hand, in his first exclusive interview with 60 Minutes, the
priorities he outlined to Leslie Stahl included: huge infrastructure spending;
preserving the popular elements of the Affordable Care Act; and avoiding
costly, stupid wars. If you closed your eyes, it sounded an awful lot like a
third Obama term.

I’ve
closely watched and grossly underestimated this guy for the past two years. He
cares about one thing. Ratings. He wants to be popular. Squeaking out a
late-night Electoral College victory will never cut it for The Trumpster. Being President of a
country in which Hillary Clinton is over a million votes more popular than he is,
must kill him. Only one thing will satisfy him now - convincingly winning the popular vote
that he lost so embarrassingly in 2016. He’s now got four years to make that
happen.

Taking
health care away from 20 million people won’t get him those votes. Sending
American boys into Syria won’t get him those votes. Privatizing social security,
cutting taxes on the rich, and letting Wall Street run wild, won’t get him those
votes. Continuing to disrespect women and minorities won’t get
him those votes.

So
maybe, just maybe, the folks who should be worried are Paul Ryan and Mitch
McConnell. Because if we’ve learned anything about the President-Elect, we know
he cares about one thing, and one thing only – Donald J. Trump. And his breathtaking
narcissism may end up being unexpectedly good news for Democrats. We’ll see.

In
the meantime, as I eat my crow this Thanksgiving, I don’t want to hear anything
more about the Comey letter. The numbers speak for themselves. Trump didn’t win
this election. Hillary lost it. And the only question left is this.What will he do with her mandate?

Wednesday, August 17, 2016

A beaten and bitter Donald Trump - blaming his
humiliating defeat on a "corrupt and disgusting media coupled with a
rigged election system" - has just acquired the faltering Fox News Network
and renamed it TNN (after guess who) so that his devoted followers on the rabid
fringe will continue to have a steady stream of nonsense – complete with a
healthy dose of Trump-branded products (made abroad, of course).

Meanwhile Hillary Clinton – stepping over the
scattered shards of a shattered glass ceiling - is preparing for America’s next
historic presidency, while trying to strike that pitch-perfect balance between
legitimate expectations on the left and groundless fears on the right. As
grandma passes the sausage stuffing (my favorite), I can hear bewildered
cousins – up from South Carolina – asking the question of the year, "What
the heck just happened?"

That’s how it will start – at Thanksgiving
tables across America - as the remnants of the rational right finally face up
to the demands of their country – made first in 2008, then in 2012, and yet
again in 2016 - only this time with a force, fury, and finality the likes of
which hasn’t been seen in decades. Only then will the lessons sink in at long
last.

In her own way, Hillary’s frustratingly
bi-polar campaign – embracing Bernie Sanders style economic populism while
simultaneously winking at Wall Street – is actually a pretty good metaphor for
exactly the kind of mixed economy that Americans yearn for. A time – well
chronicled in Paul Pierson and Jacob Hacker’s recent (and excellent) book
“American Amnesia” – when both government and business grew symbiotically. The
government existed to make sure the game was played fairly on a well-maintained
field, while business delivered great products and services – courtesy of
workers who earned good wages and then spent their increasing incomes on those
same products and services.Everybody wins.

At least that’s how it worked until organized
business decided to viciously turn on their government – which is when
everything (and I mean everything)
went kerflooey. Shared prosperity wasn’t enough for these modern day Robber
Barons who longed for a return to the low tax/no regulation Roaring Twenties -
as if the Great Depression never happened.

Gone were Republicans like President
Eisenhower, who built the interstate highway system with taxpayer dollars and
famously declared: “Should any
political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and
eliminate labor laws, you would not hear of that party again. There is a tiny
splinter group that believes you can do these things - among them are a few
Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or businessman (but) their
number is negligible and they are stupid.”

Banished were Republicans like President
Nixon, who opened up relations between the US and Communist China, increased
funding for the National Endowment for the Arts, and created the Environmental
Protection Agency.

Ostracized were Republicans like President
Bush (The Elder), who gave us the Americans with Disabilities Act as well as
the Clean Air Act.

For heaven’s sake, even the famously
government-hating Republican President Reagan said: “We’re going to close the
unproductive tax loopholes that have…made it possible for millionaires to pay nothing while a bus driver was paying
10% of his salary – that’s crazy.” Today,
Ted Cruz would dismiss him as a RINO (Republican In Name Only).

It took thirty years of living with policies imposed
by these uncompromising, anti-government nihilists to finally realize that Ike
was right, “their number is negligible and they are stupid.” Let’s face it. When government screws up, it means
that – in trying to help as many citizens as possible - a bunch of people get
benefits they don’t deserve. That’s wrong to be sure, and must be condemned and
corrected by business leaders and liberals alike. But when business screws up –
while trying to enrich a greedy few at the expense of everyone else – the
consequences are much, much worse. Millions of people lose their jobs, homes,
pensions, health, and healthcare. The time has now come for decent
conservatives to join do-gooders in calling out this atrocious behavior.

Professors Hacker and Pierson said it best
when they concluded that we’ll never fully enjoy the enormous benefits of the
“mixed economy” again, until the rational right realizes that “What’s good for
America is good for business,” and
not the other way around.

Tuesday, June 7, 2016

Hillary Clinton has all but formally won the Democratic
nomination for president – a historic achievement. The good news for her is
that she’ll have my vote in November. That bad news for me is that she knows
it. The only question remaining is how soon—if ever—will she make an earnest
effort to prevent those of us who were “Feeling The Bern” from feeling just
plain burned?

For openers, she’s got to loose the attitude that the
Sanders wing of the party is made up of hopelessly unrealistic idealists. It is
not. Many of us who were fueling Bernie’s campaign with an occasional
five-dollar contribution, are middle class baby boomers who are furious at Wall
Street – and for good reason. Wall Street raped us. Callously. Painfully. Unapologetically.
Worse still, the perpetrator has not only avoided jail time but has brazenly
taken our friend Hillary out on several very
expensive dates.

At the very least we expect her to show some remorse for
that misstep, and to pledge that it will never happen again. She’s done
neither. That’s a problem. And invoking President Obama’s coziness to Wall
Street as a defense for her own indifference to appearances is also
unacceptable. Obama’s failure to deal more harshly with those who crashed our
economy and crippled America’s middle class, continues to be the largest stain
on his otherwise stellar presidency.

Hillary’s tone is very important. For example, on the issue of
universal background checks she has exhibited genuine, heartfelt outrage at the
major roadblock to progress—the NRA. When she speaks of fixing that problem, she’s not qualifying her
position. To her credit she is firm, forthright, and unequivocal. The parents
and loved ones of all those needlessly dead kids—as well as the rest of
right-thinking America—will be better off for her sincere advocacy.

We need to hear that same passion from her about Wall
Street’s transgressions. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are not crazy
commies. They clearly see what the rest of America is rapidly discovering. The
dragon that is Wall Street -- with the unconscionable assistance of our elected
leaders -- has broken free of the chains placed upon it in the aftermath of the
Great Depression, and for more than three decades has ravaged the economic
landscape of middle class America.

In 1980, Wall Street radically changed its mission and focus
from investing in the production and exchange of goods, to the unregulated buying and selling of
assets. Restrictions on S&L’s? Gone. Rules to stabilize mortgage markets?
Gone. Let corporations buy back their own shares to raise stock prices? No
problem. Allow hostile takeovers of established companies using massive new
borrowing? Sure. And while we’re at it, why not make all that debt deductable
as a business expense under the corporate tax code? Yeah. That’s the ticket.
What could possibly go wrong?

In just the first decade of all that deranged deregulation,
one third of America’s Fortune 500 companies ceased to exist. The ones that
were left standing completely abandoned any and all deference to: long-term
growth; worker well-being; customer satisfaction; and community responsibility.
Instead, they slavishly devoted themselves to a single goal, short-term
shareholder returns. In that relentless quarterly pursuit, greedy CEO’s and unscrupulous
financiers got rich beyond their wildest dreams, while average workers—those
who didn’t get laid off--saw no pay increases at all for decades.

And as a rotten little cherry on top, the entire accumulated
home equity of America’s middle class--literally trillions of dollars--was wiped out overnight.

In 1982, Forbes Magazine first published their list of the
400 wealthiest Americans. Their combined net worth (in current dollars) was
$225 billion. That year, the list contained only two billionaires. By 2014,
every single member of the Forbes 400 was a billionaire. And that still left
out another 115 billionaires who didn’t make the cutoff—which was $1.55
billion. The combined net worth of the 2014 Forbes 400 was $2.3 trillion, or ten times what it was in 1982 – after adjusting
for inflation.

We’re not asking Hillary to slay that dragon, just to put
the chains back on so it will once again work for us and not against
us. Back in January, Hillary said, “I’m not interested in ideas that look good
on paper but can’t work in reality.” Memo to the Presumptive Democratic Nominee
for President: “Fairness” is one of America’s best ideas, and it works both on
paper and in reality.

College
of Communication & Creative Arts, and

College
of Performing Arts

By
Nicholas Paleologos

May
12, 2016

Thank-you very much President
Houshmond, Dean Pastin, Dean Arnold, distinguished faculty and Trustees, friends
& family of this outstanding Class of 2016. I first want to acknowledge the
huge debt of gratitude we owe to Henry Rowan – who passed away in December.
This son of Ridgewood shocked the world in 1992 by making the largest gift ever
-- $100 million — not to MIT, where he got his
Degree, but to a little known New Jersey public college that was founded in the
same year he was born.

Mr. Rowan’s enduring legacy to
the university that now bears his name, not only made today possible for you, but also stands as a perpetual
challenge to us: never to forget the
importance of public higher education to the future of our country.

Henry Rowan was part of what has come
to be known as “The Greatest Generation.” One by one, these parents of Baby
Boomers are passing away.

My dad was one of them. When I was a kid, I had no idea what life was like
for him when he was a kid. Dad’s parents fled a civil war in
Greece to make a new life in America — specifically, Lowell Massachusetts during
the Great Depression. He grew up in a three story tenement with no hot water.
On his first day of school, he didn’t speak a word of English.

Dad
passed away a couple of years ago. And like so many of my fellow Baby Boomers
who’ve lost their parents, I think about him a lot. About the country he left
me. About the country I’m leaving to my three millennials.

Dad was
nine years old when Franklin Roosevelt was elected president. Unemployment was
at 25%. Two million Americans were flat-out homeless. And every bank in 32 of 48
states had slammed the doors shut on their depositors. Even so, in his first
inaugural address, Roosevelt reassured us that, “The only thing we have to fear
is fear itself.”

Roosevelt
didn’t waste any time. The country had work that needed to be done and there
were millions of jobless citizens willing to do it. So the President started the
Civilian Conservation Corps. My dad lied about his age to get into the CCC, and
was immediately put to work at a state forest up in Vermont where he earned a
dollar a day, most of which was sent back home to his mother – my immigrant
grandmother.

Not
surprisingly, when Roosevelt sounded the call to arms in December of 1941, my
father was only too happy to return the favor by heading off to the Pacific to
fight in WWII. When the war ended, dad stepped off his PT Boat - proud and
penniless - with just his service dress blues and the brain in his head.

At
that moment, Roosevelt could have given dad a pat on the back and sent him home
to the hardscrabble streets of Lowell. But the president had something else in
mind. College. Not just for dad’s benefit, but for America’s. And it didn’t
matter to Roosevelt that dad couldn’t afford it. The president insisted that
the country pay for dad’s college education.

Under
the GI Bill, Arthur Paleologos – together with eight million of his fellow veterans
-- went to colleges; vocational schools; or got low interest mortgages and
loans to buy homes and start businesses. And all they did in return was create the Great American Middle Class.

Franklin
Roosevelt died in 1945. But I grew up in the America he built – a country that
could send my dad to college, build an interstate highway system, put a man on
the moon – and most important: a country where both dad’s income AND his boss’
increased at roughly the same pace -- because everybody paid their fair share
of taxes; because the banks weren’t allowed to gamble away dad’s savings; and because
the government raised mostly enough money to pay for the programs people
wanted.

That country started disappearing
when I was in my late twenties. I just didn’t know it at the time. A new
president, Ronald Reagan – in his
first inaugural address – took dead aim at Roosevelt’s America, “Government,” he famously declared, “is not the
solution to our problems, government is
the problem.”

And for the next three decades, with
precious little pushback, America did a complete 180: The higher your income, the
lower your tax rate. The harder you
work and the more you produce, the less you
keep for yourself and your family. Corporations are your friends. The
government is your enemy.

Until everything came crashing
down - right around the time you started high school. For those of you who are
fans of Frank Capra’s classic film, “It’s a Wonderful Life,” imagine falling
asleep in 1978 in Bedford Falls…and waking up thirty years later - in
Pottersville!

Just like in that movie, the great
American dream of the great American Middle Class was built on the solid
foundation of home ownership.Until
one day, the value of all those homes – literally trillions of dollars – was wiped out -- overnight.

Muslims didn’t do that. Mexicans
didn’t do that. Wall Street did. But you already know that. How could you not?
You’re graduating right smack in the middle of a huge national argument over
the role of government -- which is a little strange when you think about it.

Because the Declaration of
Independence – right up front -- tells us that the “role of government” is self-evident: namely, to secure your
right to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. That last one – the Pursuit of Happiness - has been the
subject of every presidential election since my father was 9 years old.

Believe it or not, every four
years since 1932 the same two people have been on the ballot for president.
They just had different names and different faces. But if you look very closely
you’ll see that it has always been same choice between two very different
visions of America: Roosevelt’s and Reagan’s.

Roosevelt believed that the best
way for government to secure your right to the pursuit of happiness was to – as
much as possible -- remove fear from your life. For
Roosevelt, fear makes us less productive citizens; less likely to take risks; less entrepreneurial; less forward-looking. Roosevelt believed
that a basic pre-requisite for the pursuit of happiness in America is freedom from fear.

In Reagan’s
America fear is a motivator. Fear of losing your job, of getting sick, of being
destitute in your old age – all that fear makes us work harder…makes us more productive. And - at the end of the day - if we still can’t
afford the cost of staying healthy or of educating our kids, well that’s our
fault—not our country’s.

For
Roosevelt, fear is bad. Fear holds us back.

ForReagan, fear is good. Fear moves us forward.

For thirty
years, my generation basically bought into the “fear is good” argument.But now, we see things a bit more clearly. Maybe
it’s because we’ve lost our jobs, or our homes, or our pensions, or our ability
to pay for our kids to go to college.

Maybe
it’s because billions of dollars in profits aren’t showing up in our paychecks anymore. Instead they’re
paying for 30-second commercials designed to con us into believing that money
equals speech, that corporations are people, and craziest of all: that wealth should be taxed at a lower rate
than work.

Speaking of fear – this year I
guess we’re supposed to be afraid of immigrants. That really kills me. “God
Bless America” -- for heaven’s sake -- was written by a Jewish immigrant who fled persecution in Russia in the 1890’s. His name
was Israel Isidore Baline. You know him
by his American name -- Irving Berlin.

Which brings me to the story of a
young Hispanic couple who grew up in New York City in the nineties – the 1990’s.
They first met at Hunter College High School. She was a sophomore, a math wiz,
a great dancer, and very opinionated.

He was a senior, a theater nerd
who performed in almost every school play, and always carried a boom box around
with him. He noticed her in high school, but never quite got up the courage to
talk to her.

After graduation, he went off to
Wesleyan College and
picked right up where he left off – writing, directing and acting in a bunch of
college shows, ranging from musicals to Shakespeare. He
also found time to start an improvisational comedy
troupe. After getting his degree from Wesleyan, he went back to his old High School and worked as a 7th grade
English teacher.

By
that time, she had already graduated from high school and was well on her way
to a bachelor’s degree at MIT – which eventually led to a pretty
good job as a scientist at Johnson & Johnson in Skillman, New Jersey.

While
she was at J&J, he moved into an apartment with some friends. His improv
group was making a name for itself, plus he was writing lyrics on the subway
and performing at bar mitzvahs to pay the rent.

Then, in the summer of 2005, while catching up with fellow Hunter
graduates on Facebook, he came across her profile. He sent her an instant
message inviting her to his next show. She showed up and was really impressed.

Still,
he was so shy around her that he asked a friend to get her phone number. Then
he called to invite her to another show. And yes, she showed up again. But this
time, after the show, they discovered that Hunter College High School and their
Hispanic heritage wasn’t all they had in common. There was also Grand Theft
Auto, Jay-Z and Marc Anthony.

That
night, he told her about how -- as a 7 year-old kid growing up in Washington
Heights he saw his first Broadway show -- Les
Miz -- and fell in love with the theater. He told her about how, on his 17th
birthday, he saw Rent – which changed
his entire view about how theater can speak to the real lives of people like
themselves.

It
wasn’t long before the couple became not only best friends, but also fixtures
in each other’s lives. Then lightning struck. He scored the starring role in a
Broadway show — a lifelong dream. She quit J&J to go to Fordham University to
pursue a newfound passion of hers – the law.

In
2010, the couple had a storybook wedding. At their reception, he and his family
surprised her with a heartfelt, flash mob rendition of “To Life” – the great
production number from Fiddler on the
Roof. And yes, this Jewish story of family and tradition, resonated deeply with
these second generation Latinos. You can see for yourself on YouTube. Their wedding
video went viral.

But
I’m telling you their story for a different reason.

A
few years before they got married, he decided to take some time off from his 8-performance-a-week
Broadway schedule, to coincide with her semester break from law school. He was
making decent money and decided to treat her to a vacation in Mexico.

At
the airport terminal, he bought a book that happened to catch his eye, started
reading it on the plane, and couldn’t put it down.

When
she asked him to explain exactly what was it about this 700 page historical
biography that so captivated his imagination, it literally took him a whole year
to answer that question in his own words.

These
words:

How does a bastard, orphan, son of a whore and a Scotsman,

dropped in the middle of a forgotten spot in the Caribbean

by providence, impoverished, in squalor,

grow up to be a hero and a scholar?

The 10-dollar founding father
without a father

got a lot farther by
working a lot harder,

by being a lot smarter, by
being a self-starter,

by fourteen, they placed him in charge of a trading charter.

And every day while slaves were being slaughtered

and carted away across the waves,

he struggled and kept his guard up.

Inside, he was longing for something to be a part of,

the brother was ready to beg, steal, borrow or barter.

Then a hurricane came, and devastation
reigned,

our man saw his future drip, dripping down the drain,

put a pencil to his temple, connected it to his brain,

and he wrote his first refrain, a testament to his pain.

Well, the word got around, they said, “This kid’s insane, man”

took up a collection just to send him to the mainland.

“Get your education, don’t forget from whence you came,

and the world’s gonna know your name.

What’s your name, man?”

Alexander Hamilton.

Just last month, for writing
those words – which became the opening rap of his theatrical masterpiece, HAMILTON -- Lin-Manuel Miranda won the
2016 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Last week, HAMILTON
earned 16 Tony Award nominations – the most ever.

It was the story of Hamilton the immigrant that touched
Miranda’s heart.

He said, “I recognize people I know in
Hamilton. Not only my father who came here at the age of 18 from Puerto Rico, but
also the stories of so many other immigrants who have to work twice as hard to
get half as far.”

For Miranda, Alexander Hamilton’s immigrant story opened the door to
something much, much bigger – the story of the creation of our country.

“I had to make the Founding Fathers
human for myself.” he said.“And I
think what is touching a nerve -- is other
people are finding the humanity within them as well. “

Hamilton is so much more than just the first
Hip-Hop/Rap Musical on Broadway. It is a game-changing piece of theater.

Today
that couple, Lin-Manuel Miranda and his wife Vanessa Nadal, have an eighteen-month-old
son. Miranda is now 36, and the latest in a long line of first and
second-generation American songwriters who have shaped the way we see ourselves
-- a line that stretches all the way back to, Irving Berlin.

Miranda discovered one more important
revelation in that Hamilton biography: “The ideological fights of the Founders”
he said, “are the same fights we are having today. What is the role of
government in our lives?”

I’m
slightly ashamed to admit that my dad’s generation answered that question a lot
better than my own. For some reason, we contracted an acute case of American
Amnesia – where the lessons our parents learned in the aftermath of the Great
Depression were first ignored, and then ultimately forgotten by us.

Now
it’s your turn. You are graduating into a country where the fundamental
assumptions my father lived by,
simply don’t apply any more.

In
dad’s America, Kodak - the great camera company - at its peak was valued at
more than $30 billion and employed 145,000 people.

In
your America, Instagram is also valued at more than $30 billion…but they only
employ 13 people. You live in a
country where less and less “work” is required to create more and more wealth.

In
trying to figure out the appropriate relationship between work and wealth in
the new America, you get to say what
“the pursuit of happiness” means for your generation.

You
have the opportunity to re-imagine your country as a place where people work – not
just to make a living, but to make a life
worth living. Getting to that place will require a whole lot of
creative thinking.

Along
the way, beware of folks trying to distract you with terrifying tales of Muslims
under your mattress. And remember that while the names, and faces, and parties
may change, your choice will always be the same.

Hope
or fear?

And
I don’t know about you, but I tend to do very stupid things when I’m scared to
death.

Each one of you came to Rowan blessed
with special gifts -- which you developed and sharpened here. You are artists. You
look at things that everybody else looks at, and you see things that nobody
else sees.

That unique ability -- to see truth and communicate it in ways that touch peoples’ souls – is what makes the
artist the single, most important person in any successful and prosperous
democracy.